Berlusconi must pay out €100k a day to his ex-wife

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has agreed to pay his estranged wife Veronica Lario ¤100,000 a day as part of a divorce settlement.

The ¤36m-a-year settlement, reached after three years of negotiations, was filed with a court in Milan around Christmas.

No comment was immediately available from the court or from lawyers for either Mr Berlusconi or Ms Lario.

The report comes shortly after Mr Berlusconi's return to frontline politics to lead the centre-right campaign ahead of an election in February.

Ms Lario, a former actor who was married to Mr Berlusconi for more than 22 years, asked for a divorce from the 76-year-old billionaire in 2009, accusing him of having an affair with a 17-year-old girl.

Dignity

She had already delivered a public rebuke to her husband over his relations with other women, sending an open letter to the daily La Repubblica in 2007 in which she said he owed her a public apology after injuring her dignity as a woman.

She sought a divorce two years later, saying she could "no longer stay with a man who frequents minors" after reports emerged that Mr Berlusconi had attended the 18th birthday party of model Noemi Letizia.

Since then he has been accompanied by a repeated allegations of sexual scandal, culminating in accounts last year of "bunga bunga" sex parties in his Milan home and charges of paying for sex with a juvenile prostitute, which he denies.

Ms Lario had originally asked for a monthly alimony of ¤3.5m, while Mr Berlusconi had responded with an offer of no more than ¤300,000 a month.